Kosovo

This collection of articles examines the impact of armed conflict on women, men, and gender relations. Gender stereotypes of conflict depict women and children as powerless victims, while men are presented either as saviours of the weak and powerless, or as agents of violence and destruction. Reality is more complex. Women, girls, and boys also wage war as soldiers, often against their will. Atrocities committed against them give rise to desperate physical, mental, and material need, which reconstruction and peace initiatives must recognise and address. In addition, women need to be involved as decision makers in peace and reconstruction processes. These must founded on a vision of equality in governance and everyday social interactions, if a sustainable peace is to come about. Case studies included here come from India, Kosovo, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Adopting a feminist perspective, this paper analyses the doctrine of humanitarian intervention and its impact on women in recipient states, particularly with regard to sexual violence. By analysing the phenomenon of post-conflict trafficking in Kosovo following the NATO intervention, the author presents a challenge to the ‘feminist hawks’ who have called for military intervention in situations of systematic sexual violence. It is the author’s contention that such intervention would be counterproductive for women’s rights and thus constitute a disproportionate response to sexual violence in terms of the international law governing the use of force.

Annotation:

Godec discusses current critiques of militarized humanitarian intervention and delivery of aid, which do not consider women or a gender analysis of women’s post-intervention experience. This article seeks to analyze the impact of militarized humanitarian intervention in relation to sex trafficking & forced prostitution in Kosovo. Prior to 1999, Kosovo did not have a thriving sex-industry but within months of the troops, NGO’s, and UNMIK personnel arriving due to the conflict with Serbia, brothels were established around the military bases. Due to this influx of militarized aid deliverers, Kosovo is now a major destination country for trafficking women & children and the author attributes this to:

2. Post-intervention of Kosovo sustained the demand & fostered an environment where organized criminal network could reap the profits

3. Disruption of society & economy resulted in increased numbers of women & girls in need of income thereby creating a supply for the sex industry

4. Failure of the UNMIK to address the problem of trafficking allowed for a culture of impunity to prevail

In addition to a developing sex industry, the greater the military presence the greater gender-based-violence increased in Kosovo. Godec cautions that the same pattern of international presence and the subsequent outcome on women & girls is arising in conflict areas such as: Kuwait, Afghanistan & Iraq. As a preventative, Godec calls for gender awareness and education to be brought to peacekeepers and the military. “The key criterion is whether the benefits of the use of force will outweigh the costs.”

Castillejo, Claire. 2011. ‘Building a State That Works for Women: Integrating Gender into Post-Conflict State Building’, March, Working Paper. Madrid: Fride. http://fride.org/download/WP107_Building_state.pdf

Author: Claire Castillejo

Abstract:

This working paper presents key findings from a joint FRIDE-ODI research project that investigated the impact of state building on women’s citizenship. The project was developed in response to gaps in the current state building work. On one hand, theoretical models on state building are elaborated at an abstract level that makes gender power relations invisible.For example, these tend to model the relationship between state, elites and an undisaggregated “society” without asking who is represented within each group, who participates in state-society negotiations, and whose expectations and demands are expressed within these negotiations. On the other hand, although donor policies do stress that state building should be an inclusive process, they are vague on how this – and specifically the inclusion of women - is to be achieved.

The project involved research in five post-conflict countries, Burundi, Guatemala, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Sudan. It investigated three central questions: What role do women play in state building? How do state building processes affect women’s political participation? How do state building processes affect women’s rights?

The findings highlighted that post-conflict contexts do provide new opportunities for women to mobilise. However, their ability to influence state building processes is limited both by structural barriers and by opposition from elites. While women have made some significant gains in terms of formal equality and inclusion, informal patterns of power and resource allocation have been much harder to shift. It appears that gender inequalities in these contexts are innately linked to the underlying political settlement, including the balance of power between formal and customary authorities. It is therefore critical that donors address gender as a fundamentally political issue.

Questions of the gender-responsiveness of post-conflict funding are important beyond the economic sphere. While budgets and financing are economic tools, the monies that they govern are used to finance activities that extend into all areas of govern- ment activity. In post-conflict situations, donor funds are used not only to rebuild the economy and to (re-)establish administrative systems and law and order, but also to fund social services such as education and health. Decisions as to which sectors will be funded and what will be funded within them are therefore of clear impor- tance in determining prospects for advancing gender equality in the recipient country. In an attempt to get more detailed information, the Gender Team of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned case studies in Kosovo,Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan and Timor-Leste. The case studies examine whether and how resources were allocated and used in post-conflict reconstruction initiatives to promote gender equality and address women’s needs.The studies examined whether gender issues were addressed through separate projects or through addressing gender issues in mainstream projects and programmes.They also examined how funding of post-conflict reconstruction related to their own budgets with respect to gender equality and women’s empowerment. The research covered the full post-conflict reconstruction period, including early recovery and peace-building assistance as well as later assistance as the recipient countries attempted to move towards a more ‘normal’ situation. The precise time period varied from one case study to the next and these are detailed in each individual case study. Movement towards the normal situation is reflected by a shift in instruments used, with countries over time increasingly being assisted through standard instruments and processes used in non-conflict countries. For future and current interventions, this synthesis report draws on the lessons that intervening actors as well as actors in the beneficiary countries can learn from these four case studies.

The importance of security sector reform (SSR) has increasingly been empha- sized in international engagement with post-conflict countries.In February 2007 the United Nations Security Council stressed that ‘reforming the security sector in post-conflict environments is critical to the consolidation of peace and stability, promoting poverty reduction, rule of law and good governance, extending legitimate state authority, and preventing countries from relapsing into conflict’.National governments also identify SSR as a key tool in con- solidating their authority and healing divisions of the past. This chapter explores the case and methods for addressing gender issues in post-conflict SSR processes, drawing upon experiences in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Liberia, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste, and potential models from Serbia and South Africa. Section II further defines the concepts of SSR and gender, as well as their relationship to each other. The rationale for and experiences of gender mainstreaming in SSR and promoting the full and equal participation of men and women in SSR processes are discussed in section III, with practical examples from post-conflict settings. Section IV focuses on promoting women’s participation in post-conflict security services. Section V examines some challenges for key post-conflict SSR and SSR- related activities, including gender dimensions in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes, transitional justice and justice reform. Section VI summarizes the case for integrating gender into future SSR program- ming and policymaking and outlines the key opportunities and challenges.

Security sector reform (SSR) is essential to post-conflict peacebuilding in order to prevent the reoccurrence of conflict, to enhance public security, and to create the conditions for reconstruction and development. The importance of women’s participation and gender equality in peacebuilding and security is recognized by many governments and United Nations and donor agencies. However, efforts to promote these goals are often planned and implemented independently of each other, with the result that SSR fails to include women and to address the security needs of the entire population—including women, girls and boys.

Post-conflict SSR processes have used various approaches to address gender issues.

In Afghanistan, Kosovo and Liberia SSR measures to recruit andretain women, and to make security institutions more responsive togender issues presented challenges but also yielded positive results.

In Peru, Sierra Leone and Timor- Leste truth and reconciliation commissions included mechanisms to address the experiences and justice needs of women.

Rwandan women parliamentarians made distinctive contributions to SSR by uniting across party and ethnic lines to address issues of women’s security.

In Liberia and Sierra Leone disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes contributed to developing operational procedures to ensure that women and girls are not excluded, and that the needs of men and boys are also addressed.

In Liberia and South Africa women’s civil society organizations were important partners in linking SSR with local security and justice concerns.

Gender mainstreaming—assessing the impact of SSR policies andactivities on women, men, boys and girls at every stage of the process—is a key strategy. It must be accompanied by steps to ensure that both men and women participate and are represented in SSRprocesses.

Participation of women in post-conflict security services is crucial to creating structures that are representative, trusted and legitimate,and are able to meet the security needs of both men and women.

Successful integration of gender in SSR shares the broader challenges of SSR. External actors can encourage and support, but initiatives must be led by local stakeholders. SSR has much to gain byintegrating gender.

Megan Bastick (Australia/United Kingdom) is Deputy Head of the Special Programmes Division at the

This article examines how regional and local women’s organizations in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo have used UNSCR 1325 as a tool for organizing and advocacy in three broad areas: women’s inclusion in decision-making processes; regional and human security; and transitional justice. In response to perceived unwillingness by international as well as national actors to implement UNSCR 1325, women’s organizations developed strategies to use this international norm to achieve their goals. They have done this, I argue, through a double ‘boomerang effect’. In their seminal 1998 work, Activists Beyond Borders, Keck and Sikkink demonstrated how NGOs operate to produce a boomerang effect; they appeal to transnational actors to assert international pressure against national governments in order to enforce compliance with human rights norms. In attempting to implement UNSCR 1325, women’s organizations have also often added a reverse dimension, mobilizing local support through grassroots campaigns and regional networks in order to force the United Nations and other international actors to comply with their own resolution concerning women, peace and security. In doing so, they have achieved some success in promoting inclusion. They have been less successful in using UNSCR 1325 as a tool for addressing structural sources of inequality including militarism and neo-liberal models of economic development.

In this paper I explore the terrain of the international NGO (INGO) - in this case Oxfam GB - and some of its difficulties in integrating gender equity goals in the institutional structures and policies which govern its activities in conflict and its aftermath. I look at terrain that is divided into areas that are treated very differently. These are, on one hand, the field of humanitarian interventions in the throes of an emergency, and on the other, the 'non-conflict' field of reconstruction and development. Historically, these two fields of activity have been governed by very different ways of thinking and acting, often in conflict with each other. Gender analysis and gender-sensitive programming are central to these differences, and essential tools in the attempts to overcome them. In Oxfam GB at present, the differences in approaches to gender equity in these two territories are acknowledged, if not routinely addressed; but the importance of addressing gender equity in order to overcome some of these differences, is more complicated and controversial.

Surtees, Rebecca. 2008. “Traffickers and Trafficking in Southern and Eastern Europe: Considering the Other Side of Human Trafficking.” European Journal of Criminology 5 (1): 39–68. doi:10.1177/1477370807084224.

Author: Rebecca Surtees

Abstract:

This paper describes patterns of trafficking from and within South-Eastern Europe, with particular attention to traffickers and their activities. This helps to determine the most effective methods of tackling these grave crimes through the strategic use of the criminal justice system. To date, attention has primarily been paid to victims of trafficking – who they are and what makes them vulnerable – in an effort to develop counter-trafficking interventions. To complement these studies of victims, studies of traffickers and their operations are also required. There is a need to address traffickers’ behavior through more effective law enforcement and through legal, social and economic reforms that will cause them to reassess the economic benefits of pursuing this strategy.

Harrington, Carol. 2003. “Peacekeeping and Prostitution in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.” Paper presented at the 5th European Feminist Research Conference, Lund, August 20-23.

Author: Carol Harrington

Abstract:

This paper compares the organisation of sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo during UN operations to the sexual violence associated with US military bases in the Republic of Korea (ROK) during the 1970s, while also drawing some comparisons with the way sexual violence was organised in wartime Yugoslavia. I argue that in all of these cases military men agree that soldiers are entitled to heterosexual encounters, and thus provide women for soldiers to have sex with, treating the women concerned as people whose well- being, dignity and bodily integrity is of no relevance at all. Such sexual violence appears to be institutionalised across contemporary militaries. However, the political logic that categorises women as people to be protected or as people who have no rights to bodily integrity differs across sites. My enquiry is based in a sociology of the body that treats sexual violence as political violence, thus I expect that the sexual categorisation and organisation of women for soldiers will reveal important aspects of the political order the militaries involved are defending. I will elaborate on this theoretical perspective in relation to the three cases in the course of my discussion. Through comparing these three military contexts I seek to understand how military thinkers in the case of Bosnia and Kosovo divided people in relation to physical security and rights to bodily integrity, and thus to uncover the logic of the political order these peacekeeping operations defended. (Intro)

Jennings, Kathleen M., and Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović. 2009. “UN Peacekeeping Economies and Local Sex Industries: Connections and Implications.” MICROCON Working Paper 17, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Authors: Kathleen M. Jennings, Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović

Abstract:

“Peacekeeping economies” have not been subject to much analysis of either their economic or socio-cultural and political impacts. This paper uses a gendered lens to explore some ramifications and lasting implications of peacekeeping economies, drawing on examples from four post-conflict countries with past or ongoing United Nations peacekeeping missions: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liberia, and Haiti. The paper is particularly concerned with the interplay between the peacekeeping economy and the sex industry. It examines some of the characteristics and impacts of peacekeeping economies, arguing that these are highly gendered – but that the “normalization” of peacekeeping economies allows these effects to be overlooked or obscured. It also contends that these gendered characteristics and impacts have (or are likely have) broad and lasting consequences. Finally, the paper considers the initial impacts of UN efforts to tackle negative impacts of peacekeeping economies, particularly the zero-tolerance policy against sexual exploitation and the effort to “mainstream” gender and promote gender equality in and through peacekeeping. The paper suggests that the existence and potential long- term perpetuation of a highly gendered peacekeeping economy threatens to undermine the gender goals and objectives that are a component of most peace operations.